...Why are we, today, so rich compared to our ancestors? Why are some countries so rich and others so poor? Why were a handful of European countries able to conquer much of the rest of the globe? Those are just a few of the questions we will explore this year, together.

You see, Economics is not just about money, or exchange, or the distribution of resources. It is about human action, and interaction. It is a science of society. And History — the record of human experience — provides us with the raw data. It is the source of all of the models, all of the theories of how society works. And it is their test. History is the evidence — it is the rock upon which an economic theory survives, or is broken.

But humans are complicated: we are diverse and unpredictable. The challenge for a social science is thus far greater than that for the physical, natural sciences. We will thus be asking big questions, but we will not always find answers. This is something I hope you will get used to at university, where we hope to push at the boundaries of human knowledge, not just to learn what is already known.

I have also tried to make the scope of this course as broad as possible — I have tried to be ambitious! We will not only be looking at the West, and we will not only be looking at the recent past. The course will take us as far back as the Neolithic — to over ten thousand years BC — all the way to the present. And the breadth of subjects will be vast: from looking at the causes of the Great Depression in the 1930s, to investigating the institutions that sustained long-distance trade in medieval North Africa. We will look at sweeping theories of Economic History covering entire continents; and we will look at studies of very specific instances that still shed valuable light on the biggest and broadest of questions.

At the same time, we will use economic principles to understand history. This will not be history as you know it — one king or queen after another, one politician after the next. Instead, we will explore the fundamental forces that give rise to empires, and destroy nations; the institutions that give rise to trade, and the fundamental sources of human prosperity.

...We will explore why some countries have become so rich, and ask why others remain poor. Among other things, we will uncover the origins of the modern state, and the institutions that make trade possible. And we will explore the evolution of the global economy – periods of globalisation, economic collapse, and rapid industrialisation....

The Rise of Democracy: Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutional Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” The Journal of Economic History 49, no. 4 (December 1, 1989): 803–32; Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, “Why Did the West Extend the Franchise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective,” +The Quarterly Journal of Economics_ 115, no. 4 (November 1, 2000): 1167–99; Inequality within Countries: Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), Introduction & Chapters 1, 2, 3....

Part III – The Modern Global Economy: Globalisation 1850-1914: Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009), Chapter 7; Kevin H. O′Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy, New Ed edition (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001), Chapters 1, 2, 7.... The Great Divergence: De-Industrialisation of the Periphery?: Robert C. Allen, Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), Chapters 4, 5, 8; Alice H. Amsden, The Rise of “The Rest”: Challenges to the West from Late-Industrializing Economies, New Ed edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), Chapters 2, 3....

Protectionism vs. Free Trade: Douglas A. Irwin, “Tariffs and Growth in Late Nineteenth Century America,” World Economy 24, no. 1 (January 1, 2001): 15–30; Laura Panza and Jeffrey G. Williamson, “Did Muhammad Ali Foster Industrialization in Early Nineteenth-Century Egypt?” The Economic History Review 68, no. 1 (February 1, 2015): 79–100.... The Gold Standard: Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, Second Edition, Second edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).... De-Globalisation and the Great Depression: Barry Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression 1919-1939 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992), Chapter 1; Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009), Chapter 8.... Post-War Re-Globalisation and Catch-up Growth: Robert C. Allen, Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), Chapter 9; Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009), Chapter 9; Peter Temin, “The Golden Age of European Growth Reconsidered,” European Review of Economic History 6, no. 1 (2002): 3–22.

Recent and Worth Highlighting...

About Brad DeLong

The Most-Recent Thirty

We Are with Her!

Looking Forward to Four Years During Which Most if Not All of America's Potential for Human Progress Is Likely to Be Wasted

With each passing day Donald Trump looks more and more like Silvio Berlusconi: bunga-bunga governance, with a number of unlikely and unforeseen disasters and a major drag on the country--except in states where his policies are neutralized.

Nevertheless, remember: WE ARE WITH HER!

Blogging: What to Expect Here

The purpose of this weblog is to be the best possible portal into what I am thinking, what I am reading, what I think about what I am reading, and what other smart people think about what I am reading...

"Bring expertise, bring a willingness to learn, bring good humor, bring a desire to improve the world—and also bring a low tolerance for lies and bullshit..." — Brad DeLong

"I have never subscribed to the notion that someone can unilaterally impose an obligation of confidentiality onto me simply by sending me an unsolicited letter—or an email..." — Patrick Nielsen Hayden

"I can safely say that I have learned more than I ever would have imagined doing this.... I also have a much better sense of how the public views what we do. Every economist should have to sell ideas to the public once in awhile and listen to what they say. There's a lot to learn..." — Mark Thoma

"Tone, engagement, cooperation, taking an interest in what others are saying, how the other commenters are reacting, the overall health of the conversation, and whether you're being a bore..." — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

"With the arrival of Web logging... my invisible college is paradise squared, for an academic at least. Plus, web logging is an excellent procrastination tool.... Plus, every legitimate economist who has worked in government has left swearing to do everything possible to raise the level of debate and to communicate with a mass audience.... Web logging is a promising way to do that..." — Brad DeLong

"Blogs are an outlet for unexpurgated, unreviewed, and occasionally unprofessional musings.... At Chicago, I found that some of my colleagues overestimated the time and effort I put into my blog—which led them to overestimate lost opportunities for scholarship. Other colleagues maintained that they never read blogs—and yet, without fail, they come into my office once every two weeks to talk about a post of mine..." — Daniel Drezner